Sara Errani upsets error-ridden Marion Bartoli in third round – Toray Pan Pacific Open 2012
World number seven, Sara Errani, carried on her sublime run of form and outsmarted the French powerhouse, Marion Bartoli, in the third round clash of the Toray Pan Pacific Open on Wednesday. The sixth seeded Italian laboured for
two hours and 22 minutes before sidelining the world number 10, Bartoli, from the WTA Premier-level tournament in Tokyo, Japan.
Errani has been the reel tennis sensation this season and she proved once again that her recent heroics were not just flukes. She displayed some high quality tennis to topple the ever-dangerous French number one contestant on Wednesday.
The 25-year-old dropped the opener to Bartoli and wasn’t expected to make such a thumping come back in the following sets. Errani blasted her way past the ninth seed Frenchwoman and reeled off the last two set, dropping merely four games, to come out as the
deserving winner.
Bartoli was mainly hurt by her own error-ridden game play in the match. She was very precise with her ground strokes in the opening set but a sudden slump in her accuracy resulted in a series of unforced errors from her in the
next two sets. The 27-year-old veteran spilled a total of 12 double faults in the entire contest, bagging merely 26 out of her 47 first serve points to fritter away her advantage in the later part of the match. Bartoli managed to sneak five out of 10 break
points but had to suffer eight cracking ones from the Italian aggressor, eventually submitting to her might in the third set.
Errani’s phenomenal 77 per cent serve precision earned her 36 out of 66 first serve points and she carried on pinching her rival on the crucial stages of the match. She wasn’t at her best in the opening one hour of the match but
once she found her winning groove, it was an all-Italian showdown in Tokyo. Errani breezed through the two sets with identical scores of 6-2, 6-2 and booked a place in the quarter-final of the Pan Pacific Open in style.
The sixth seed Italian will face either Petra Martic or Nadia Petrova in the quarter-final draw.
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